“No, we called. Not me, the deputy inspector. Called Intel. Your people went to the Mexicans. Then little miss Colonel Bitch showed up.”

Fisk smiled again. “She’s tough.”

Escher turned on him. “You know her?”

“Know of her. Let me get in there, see what I can do. You’re not going to win the jurisdictional issue. My guess is somebody’s going to slap a temporary injunction on the NYPD and seal this thing until somebody on the federal level works out who’s got what. If he’s in New York on a diplomatic passport, they’ll claim there’s some kind of diplomatic immunity.”

Escher shook her head in disgust. “The guy’s dead, he’s beyond needing immunity. Are they going to fly up an entire crime lab to process this, too?”

Fisk nodded, showing her his open hands in a gesture of calm. “Let me see.”

A skirmish erupted to their left, as a Secret Service agent got into it with a Mexican PF bodyguard who was trying to enter the vehicle. The Secret Service agent was physically restraining the man.

Fisk hustled over, and with others separated the two men. That brought the deputy inspector over, coming around one end of the car. Garza marched around the other end.

Fisk said to the Secret Service agent, “You know better than that. Get Dukes on the phone.”

Then he went to head off Garza.

“You’re going to need the NYPD on this one,” he told her.

“Detective Fisk,” she said. “I don’t have time to debate this. I have lost a man—”

She was going to say more, but stopped.

Fisk said, “Could I have a word with you over here, Comandante?”

Garza looked at the other officials, then stepped to the side with Fisk away from the others.

She looked even more pale than she had when he met her at Intel headquarters yesterday—though her bearing, perhaps exacerbated by the turf argument, was more erect, her chin higher, her eyes more imperious.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t give a shit about any of this squabbling here. It’s only holding things up. I’m playing a much longer game. I want to know what is going on here.”

She did not hesitate with her comeback. “I wanted your help yesterday. You refused. You want answers for what has happened here? I don’t have them yet. But when I get them, they will remain with me.”

“Okay, we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. Get my meaning? It’s an American idiom. We didn’t hit it off right. I’m ready to apologize and move forward if you are.”

“No.”

“I see.” Fisk looked back at the others, who were standing around waiting to see what came of this head to head argument. “I imagine General de Aguilar has official duties to attend to. I’m wondering where the other man is at this hour. His name was Virgilio.”

He read distress in Garza’s refusal to answer.

“I’m telling you right now, my Intel Division can help you better than anyone. If your man is missing, we can mobilize and follow his tracks. But—and that’s a big goddamn but—you need to be up front with me about what is going on here.”

“I accept.”

“You . . . what?” Fisk all but scratched his head. “Didn’t you just refuse to apologize a moment ago?”

“You were rude yesterday. But I am more than willing to put aside pride in order to draw upon your full resources in order to—”

“ ‘Full resources’ is a matter to be decided. We move predicated on the level of seriousness.”

Garza said, “It is of the utmost seriousness, but the focus is President Umberto Vargas.”

“Who is going to be signing a treaty with our president in a few days.” Fisk reset, thumbing his pockets, checking her eyes for signs of untruth. “What do you think happened here?”

Garza said, “This man was with Virgilio last night.”

“He is part of the Presidential Guard?”

“Yes,” said Garza, her eyes narrowing just a bit. “And no.”

“Where is Virgilio now?” asked Fisk.

Garza swallowed. “I believe he has been taken.”

CHAPTER 29

In Fisk’s car, on the way back into Manhattan, Cecilia Garza finished a telephone call with General de Aguilar, the head of the EMP, updating him on the discovery of the dead man. She was cognizant that Fisk understood Spanish, and did not go into full detail. She hung up and looked at Fisk, watching him drive.

At first she thought he was still wearing the same clothes as the day before, but no. This was a fresh blue shirt, red necktie, and gray suit tailored to his athletic frame. He had about him a look of solidity, as though nothing that happened around him was going to move him from what he intended to do. He was quite handsome. This was something she generally distrusted in a man.

She felt a wave of vertigo as he cut across two lanes of traffic. The possibility of losing Virgilio made her sick. She might never be able to convince a foreigner what kind of man he was.

“I know this man,” she said. Her voice came out strident and high-handed, as it always did when she felt stressed or defensive. Sometimes it was useful to have that quality. But she was not sure if this was one of those times. “We have been in a state of war, of civil war. Nobody trusts the police, and often with good reason. I would put my life in his hands.”

“He is not a federale?”

“He was a member of the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional. The CISEN. Do you know what that is?”

“Mexican CIA. The equivalent.”

“There is a new group forming . . .”

“The CNI,” said Fisk. It was a new national intelligence agency within CISEN, created by the newly elected President Vargas, aimed at centralizing and coordinating efforts against organized crime, part of an overall movement to centralize Mexico’s security apparatus.”

“Calderón was focused on attacking major criminal groups,” said Garza, referring to the previous Mexican president. “It was effective at times, but at a great cost. We saw massive waves of violence unleashed all across the country. Vargas’s strategy is to prevent violence through intelligence gathering and improved communication within the Interior Ministry.”

“Sounds like you voted for him.”

“I did.”

“So what was Virgilio, if that is his real name, doing here as part of Vargas’s advance team? I know he did not register with our people.”

“No, he is here under deep cover. Brought in on my recommendation.”

“Because of a threat to your president. Why didn’t you alert the United Nations, the State Department, Secret Service . . . ?”

“Is that what you would do when your president visits a foreign power? Even a close ally? Do you turn his welfare over to them? No. We are his security force, and we are best suited to safeguard him against any threat.”

They were on the bridge, crossing over into Manhattan. Garza looked for landmarks, spotting the Empire State Building spire to the west. The sight of that icon should have set her mind at ease, should have demonstrated to her that she was beyond the reach of the man who had filled the plaza in front of the Palacio de Justicia in Nuevo Laredo with headless corpses. But apparently now nothing was beyond his reach.

She was certain now. Chuparosa was here.

Fisk asked, “Which drug cartel is it? The Zetas? Sinaloa?”

Garza shook her head. “None of the above.”

Fisk looked at her. “Colombians?”

“Can you drive any faster?”

She was not ready to explain it fully. And there was no way to explain it partially. She knew that questioning a man’s driving was the surest way to get him to speed up and to distract him from the issue at hand.

Fifteen years ago, Cecilia Garza wouldn’t have felt even a ghost of shame at feeling vulnerable in front of a stranger. In fact her twenty-year-old self would have been ashamed not to feel deeply, would have considered it almost a moral imperative, a necessary affirmation of her own humanity. But now? Sometimes she hardly even recognized the person she had become. A decade and a half ago she had been an outgoing, lighthearted, maybe even somewhat frivolous person. University life, ditching early classes, taking weekend trips with girlfriends, singing karaoke when that craze was new. Dancing with strangers and drinking with friends. That girl wouldn’t have had a moment’s regret about feeling insecure. In truth, she had been proud and even protective of her volatile artistic temperament, nurturing it: thinking of herself as someone alive to the rhythms of the world, her skin raw and sensitive to every change of wind, every frothing wave washing across the surface of her life. Like her mother. And her young sister.